Thursday, September 17, 2009 - Liv Boeree
This week’s been one of my hardest ever in poker. As you can probably tell from the title of this blog, I experienced the agony of the bubble. Now obviously this is something none of us who have ever played more than a few tournaments have not experienced, but my encounters with it over the past few days have been none other than exemplary. It all started on Sunday, where you UB regulars may have been aware of, or indeed playing in, the 50 seat Aruba guarantee. This was UB’s $500 buy in massive giveaway of fifty $8,500 golden tickets to their annual Aruba Classic tourney (and if you don’t know what that is I dunno what planet you’ve been living on). Now I’m already going to Aruba either way, but I won a step into this 50 seat mega to try and win another seat which baEnsically equals a bucketload of cash. Anyway, I played pretty near perfect all tournament until we got to just 70 players, and then combination of factors allowed me to get short but then I did the inexcusable thing of miss a couple of vital blind stealing opportunities to get myself back to healthy. Next thing I knew there were just 55 left and I was looking like it’d all be ok with me sat in 48th. However lady luck seemed to favour a number of these shorterstacks and before I knew what was happening there were 51 left, and only 1 person shorter than me and he was at my table. By this stage neither of us had any fold equity whatsoever so I tried to play the waiting game. He decided to play it even more and left himself with basically two hands left (the antes were huge) knowing the blinds were about to go up and eat my stack completely. And they did. And I finished stone cold bubble for 51st out of nearly 800 for 50 seats after sitting up til 5am UK time and ready to throw myself out a window.
However, Monday morning made me suck it all up as I had to head up to Nottingham to play the first ever English Poker Open, a $5k buy in tourney featuring pros such as Phil Hellmuth and Doyle Brunson so I was pretty excited to be playing it. Things started slowly for me but then I got moved to the feature table with James Akenhead and Devilfish. Devilfish pretty promptly doubled me up in a really interesting hand that I’ll write about next week, and then I cruised from there til the end of day 1 with about 60 of the 213 entries remaining.
Day 2 started a bit rocky with me getting short at one point but then getting it up to about 50k average with around 35 left and rapidly approaching the bubble. I then proceeded to run big hand into bigger hand in quick succession leaving me with a short shovable stack and doing the shovey thing at what seemed like an appropriate moment to get called off by yet another monster busting me again close to the money. Anyway, starting just as I busted was a super deep structure $750 event so I jumped straight back into the saddle to play that. This one went really well and before I knew it I’d played 10 hours and we were seven from the money and I had a healthy stack and picked up those darling little weapons (the AA) and got it all in versus the big stack with 44s. Can you guess happened? Where’s the rope…
Tags: Aruba, aruba classic, Devilfish, doyle brunson, English Poker Open, James Akenhead, Phil Hellmuth, Poker Poker Poker, ub
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Thursday, September 10, 2009 - Liv Boeree
Now I’m back in London I’m having kind of a crappy week dealing with the mundane and the not so mundane, including some rather large life changes such as house moves and figuring out where I want to live for the foreseeable future. I am finding myself increasingly drawn to the “Land of the free” as you people call it, and could well be heading out west yonder (back to the country speak too). I’m not sure when, or even to which city (most like LA or Vegas) but I reckon by the end of the year for sure, so it’s exciting times!
The next thing I’m really excited about is the English Poker Open that I’m playing in next week – Phil Hellmuth and Doyle Brunson are also coming over to play the event, which is a $5k buy in with $1m guarantee, and it’ll be by far the biggest tourney I’ve ever played on my home turf so it seems only right that I should win it, don’t you think? Til then I’m gonna be playing online on UB – I’ve rediscovered my love for cash again over the past few weeks, having not played much at all for nearly a year. It’s too easy to get swept up in the glory and gratification that tourneys dangle infront of your face each time you enter one and had forgotten the joys of good, deep-stack grindery. Even just playing a few hours a week has helped re-vamp my game immensely over the past month and has truly blown away the cobwebs of stuck-in-a-rut post-WSOP poker blues!
Tags: doyle brunson, English Poker Open, London, Phil Hellmuth, Play online, Poker Poker Poker, ub, Vegas, WSOP
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Saturday, June 20, 2009 - Gene Bromberg
I spent about 90 minutes watching the final table of the $10,000 Stud/8 World Championship, in part because Doyle Brunson was at that final table and he had a chance to tie Phil Hellmuth for most WSOP bracelets. In those ninety minutes not one player was eliminated and I heard the phrase “let’s chop it up” about 137 times, so I withdrew to download some photos. Doyle was actually eliminated in seventh place just a few minutes ago, so he won’t be tying Phil’s record tonight.
And who knows how long eleven bracelets will be the record, because even as we speak Phil is deep in the $2,000 Limit Hold-Em event. They’re just about on the money bubble, and should Phil survive till it bursts it would give him his his record 72nd WSOP cash, and from reading his most recent tweets he’s been all over the place, nearly felted, then winning several huge pots in a row to rebuild his stack. According to the most recent PokerNews’ tally Phil has around 100,000 and is high on the leaderboard, so maybe it’s his turn to make a final table and make a run at the bracelet. Johnny Chan made the semi-finals of the $10K Heads-Up event last week, Doyle made a final table today, will Phil find himself under the bright lights tomorrow evening? A long way to go before we know the answer to that question.
Tags: 2009 world series of poker, 2009 wsop, doyle brunson, johnny chan, most world series of poker bracelets, most wsop bracelets, most wsop cashes, most wsop final tables, Phil Hellmuth, ub, ultimatebet, world series of poker, WSOP, wsop final tables
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Monday, June 15, 2009 - Gene Bromberg
Phil Hellmuth, of course, holds the record for most World Series of Poker bracelets with eleven. But will he hold that record by himself by the end of the day. On the ESPN Feature Table Johnny Chan is in the quarterfinals of the $10,000 Heads-Up World Championship, and should Chan defeat three opponents in one-on-one play today he’d tie Phil with eleven bracelets apiece.
Chan was the first player to win ten bracelets, though his mark was matched less than a week later by Doyle Brunson. Phil Hellmuth then caught them both and then surpassed them when he won his eleventh bracelet in 2007. That’s the last time these three legends engaged in one-upsmanship with each other…until today?
Tags: 11 bracelets, 2009 world series of poker, 2009 wsop, doyle brunson, johnny chan, most wsop bracelets, Phil Hellmuth, who has the most wsop bracelets, world series of poker, WSOP
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Monday, June 1, 2009 - Gene Bromberg
As you might expect there’s a big crowd watching the two remaining tables of World Champions battling it out. Phil Hellmuth is still in (as of a half-hour ago he had 10k, up from the starting stack of 1,000) and they’ll play until they get down to the final nine for the final table. There are 12 players left (Brad Daugherty, Scotty Nguyen and Chris Ferguson were just eliminated) so chances are they won’t play too deep into the night. I’ve been elbowing and kidney-punching my way around the rail snapping pictures and I thought now might be a good time to share a few of them.
I have to warn you, I like grainy black-and-white pics that have that old-time feel to them, so you’ll have to indulge me if I post a lot during the Series. Truth be told, a crappy color photo can be turned into a compelling B&W pic with a little creative adjustment. I’d like to think I salvaged something from a fairly blah photo here:
That’s Robert Varkonyi, Chris Moneymaker, Greg Raymer, Huck Seed, Dan Harrington, Carlos Mortensen, and Chris Ferguson. A from-the-hip snapshot captures seven World Champions.
Doyle Brunson. He’s always been The Man, he’ll always be The Man.
The always-thirsty Prince of Poker, Scotty Nguyen.
And, of course, Phil Hellmuth, wearing his game face. I think I would too, if I was in serious contention for a 1970 Corvette Stingray. And the title of Champion of Champions.
I’ll be posting a lot more photos here on the blog throughout the Series, and if you want to see those that either didn’t make the cut or couldn’t be shoehorned into a post no matter how hard I tried, they’re posted at my Flickr page. Now I’m gonna grab my machete and see if I can clear a path to Dan Harrington.
Tags: 2009 world series of poker, 2009 wsop, carlos mortensen, champions invitational, Chris Ferguson, chris moneymaker, dan harrington, doyle brunson, greg raymer, Huck Seed, Phil Hellmuth, Robert Varkonyi, Scotty Nguyen, world champions invitational, world series of poker, WSOP, wsop champions invitational, wsop invitational
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Monday, April 20, 2009 - Scott Ian
I flew to Vegas today to play in Doyle Brunson’s Beer Pong tourney. The event was being held at Hogs And Heifers in downtown Vegas. If you’ve never been to Hogs And Heifers, I highly recommend it. It’s a real dive bar with the right attitude. It’s definitely worth the cab ride from the strip. It’s only a couple of miles but it feels like a universe away from the bullshit fancy pants places in the casinos that charge way too much and everyone looks like a Rock Of Love or Tool Academy cast member. I paired up with UB’s own Debo and we figured we’d have a good shot at winning the thing. My hand-eye coordination is really good and even though I’d never played beer pong before, I have had drinks on stage before and still played my guitar perfectly!
Guitar playing has got to be harder than throwing a ping pong ball into a cup right?? In the first round we drew last years champs who also happen to work at H&H. Debo and I weren’t scared. We beat them and then we’re the team to beat. Send a message! The match started off ugly for us as one of the players on the other team named Mitch hit like 6 in a row. Jeez!!! We started to come back and I made 5 or 6 shots and we closed the gap from being down like 7 to 2 to 4 to 2. They hit again and we had 1 cup left. We got them down to 2 cups but then they hit and we couldn’t tie it. Oh well, there’s always next year. I had a blast any way. The shit talking was epic and the bar was crazy with 4 tables of beer pong going at the same time. A whole group of us, me, Debo, Poker Ho, WiscoMurray, Tracy “Fatcats” Scala and a few others made a $100 a man last longer bet but we made the mistake of inviting the ringers as well so nobody collected. Everyone was having a blast. The Binger brothers lost a tough match. Michael Binger was on fire, hitting 6 in a row at one point. Liv Boeree also kicked ass in her first match. I was out but stayed to cheer on my pals and drink a lot of PBR. Debo came and found me and told me that a bunch of guys were heading over to Caeser’s to play a $200 tourney and I decided to roll with them because if I stayed at H&H I would get REALLY drunk and not be very happy on my 7:25AM flight to NY the next morning.
So we phantomed to Caesers. Myself, Debo, Ho, Wisco and Tracy all bought in. Wisco and I were at the same table. There were only about 100 people in the tourney and I felt good about my chances with 5000 in chips and 40 minute levels. I played so patient, winning pots, playing my image, chipping up to around 15K. At that point the blinds were 2-400 with a 50 ante and I woke up with AA on the button. There was a raise in front of me to 2K, I call. The flop comes Q,6,2. He shoves, I call. He’s got 10’s. The turn is a blank and then he spikes his 10 on the river. I felt the air go out of me a bit and now my 5:30AM wake up call started to loom large. I really didn’t tilt, what can you do? I got my money in good. That shuffle is an asshole. That’s all it is. That beat took me down to a little over 5K in chips and now the blinds were 3-600 with a 75 ante and I shove the next hand with A3c. The BB calls with 89c. My A high wins it. I was still a bit loopy from the KO blow of the rivered 10 but at least I had around 13K. A few hands later I steal the blinds open raising to 1800 and then the next hand I have 99 and I open raise to 1800. Wisco shoves, I call. He’s got AJ and he hits an A on the flop and that leaves me with 1200. I’m all in a few hands later with Q8 vs AK and I’m off to bed for my
7:25 AM flight to NY.
All in all a blast of an day/night and I can’t wait to hang with Team UB again soon.
Cheers,
Scott
Tags: Beer Pong, Caesars, Debo, doyle brunson, Michael Binger, Vegas
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Monday, April 20, 2009 - Debo34
My Vegas trip was pretty short, just 5 days but was filled with nonstop action, and activities. The very first day I participated in Doyle Brunson’s 2nd annual beer pong tournament at hogs and heifers bar in downtown Vegas. UltimateBet was represented well with me, Scott Ian, p0ker h0, Tracy Scala, Hollywood Dave, and Wiscomurray all attending. I was teamed up with Scott for the tournament, which unfortunately for us was short lived. In the first round we played 2 bouncers from the bar, who by the way were defending champions and it showed. They started off hot and it looked like we were going to get destroyed. We actually made it close at the end and had a legitimate chance to win it if we had made just 2 more shots. Scott had never played the game before but he was a natural…no surprise that a rock star would be good at a drinking game. It was an awesome time, with a lot of cool people.
The next day I played the $500 6 max circuit event at Caesars. This tournament was a bit strange in the fact that for the first 6 hours of this tournament every single thing I did seemed to work out perfect. I picked up and had to show down so many big hands early, that a few hours in, it didn’t matter if I had cards or not. I won pot after pot building my stack from 8k to 36k with small pot after small pot with nothing big ever risked. Just when it seemed like I would cruise deep into this tournament, it all came crashing down in 1 big hand. With the blinds at 300/600 a fairly aggressive player made it 1800 from second position. I was on the button and looked down to see KK. The raiser had close to the same stack as was a very aggressive player after the flop even when he missed. The player directly behind me was a player who seemed like he was going broke soon. He was sitting on 14k and I thought it was very likely he might squeeze here as well. He had all of his chips in the middle at least 6 times before this hand. So I decide to flat call and try to trap and win a big pot. The guy behind me immediately raised to 6200 of his 14k. When it folded back to the original raiser he thought for about 20 seconds before announcing he was all in. This became a monster pot for this time in the tournament. Part of me wanted to lay this hand down. Not because I thought I was behind, but because everything had gone right with very little risk so far. I really didn’t want to gamble for all of my chips at this point. It reminded me of some of the things I have heard Phil Hellmuth say in the past, that at the time I heard them I thought were absurd. He was talking about not wanting to get all his money in even though his hand was dominant because he knew he would find better spots with less risk. This all made sense to me at that particular point in time. I knew my hand was good but yet I wasn’t sure I wanted to call. I decided to make the call, and the guy who made it 6200 folds with almost half of his money in the pot. My KK was up against AK and I lost the hand when an ace came on the flop. He had me covered by 900 chips. I went to the rail, and he went to chip leader in the tournament with over 80k in chips. I can’t wait to discuss this hand with Phil next time we are together. I’ve never wanted to fold a hand that I knew was dominant so badly in my life. I know this sounds crazy, as it did to me before I was put in a spot where I felt like I had control of the table like I did that day.
The only good news that came about busting from this tournament is that I got to attend the UB dinner at Fix at Bellagio we had for our Bellagio super sat package winners. Miss C put on a great dinner party and we had a great time drinking and eating, and drinking some more as we got to chat with the winners. When we were finished there we all headed over to play the drunken 11pm tournament at Caesars. Luckily for me I was out in the first 20 minutes so I could get some rest for the next day.
The next day I went and played a $2500 satellite for the 25k WPT championship. As it turns out I really didn’t need to get sleep at all for this tournament as I was out within the first hour when twice I flopped top 2 pair, and twice got caught on the river. Grrrrr
My trip overall was an A+ for fun, and a D- for poker. It’s hard to pay the bills with fun last time I checked, but I guess it could be worse. Besides, I’ll have 7 weeks in Vegas starting late May. I’m sure I will get my fill then.
Good Luck
Debo
Tags: Bellagio, doyle brunson, Fix, Hollywood Dave, P0ker H0, Phil Hellmuth, Scott Ian, Tracy "Fatcats" Scala, ultimatebet, wiscomurray, WPT Championship
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Friday, April 17, 2009 - P0ker H0
Scott Ian and Debo have made the challenge and me and Wiscomaurray have accepted. For bragging right and the titles “Beer pong” It is truly the only why real men can prove there worth.The Doyle Brunson beer pong challange 2 is this Monday 4-11 at Hogs and Heffer in Vegas .It is a invite only compition but spectators are welcome. If your in Vegas stop by, this promises to be a wild time. A lot of the Big names in poker will be there along with rock stars and a bunch of beer. How can this not be a blast? Also on this list of players that will be there is “just signed” UB pro Matt Graham. Im looking forward to seeing Matt there he is a great guy and one hell of a poker player. I had the pleasure of playing with Matt in Reno last year where he knocked me out in third place and he went on to win.So maybe i can pay him back in beer pong:) I really want to welcome Matt to UB wish him all the best .If you see him at the tables make sure you do the same.My next blog will be a video blog form Vegas make sure to check it out before it gets censored. Also if your in the Madison WI. area Wiscomurray and myself are hosting our own radio show “Man Up with Mark and Mike” starts this Saturday 2 pm. AM,1670 WTDY pod cast of the show will be available soon.
Good luck at the tables H0
Tags: doyle brunson, Matt Graham
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Wednesday, April 15, 2009 - HollywoodDave
Alright rockstars, it is officially reeeeeally late right now but i wanted to drop a quickie update & some swanky new UB videoblogs for your viewing pleasure… finally got back to Vegas after a great Easter with my dad, bros, & hottie gf MB & the action never stops!
After amazingly turning down Dodgers home opener tix after I booked myself to play in the Doyle Brunson Beer Pong Championship with E-Sho (sis Erica Schoenberg) here at the rockin’ Hogs & Heifers biker bar in Vegas, we proceeded to have a total blast but still went donkdown in round one! We were up against a pair of local bartenders who i suspect had played the game a BIT more frequently than Erica or I have, especially considering we both graduated college years ago…
Here’s a vidblog I made just for UB during the madness… in a world exclusive, it features myself & UB’s own Scott Ian and Debo filming simultaneous vidblogs! In fact, I’m actually doing MY vidblog while shooting Debo doing HIS, while we hold each other’s respective cameras! Check it out
Even though Erica and I didn’t advance, we had a helluva time drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon and talking plenty of shit! And lo and behold, we ended up winning the trophy for ‘Stick to Playing Cards’ lol
TONITE was a blast — a bunch of us UB pros got together at Fix here in Vegas to kick it with the players who qualified thru UB to play in the WPT 25k super satellite tomorrow. So we did what you would expect us to: get drunk and end up buying in to a late-nite $120 tourney here in town with a sick last-longer bet that ended up being as large as the 2nd place prize money!! Needless to say, I busted early but my girl MB made it all the way to 3rd place, daddy-o! And extra sweet to have the nice big piece of her action, too… ship!
Here’s another vidblog i shot while all of us random UB pros were wandering over to buy in for the event….see if you can spot us all!
Alrighty then…..it is late as shit and i have def gotta crash….got people coming to install a new TV in about 2 hours lol….laters all!
-hd.
Follow Ultimate Bet on Twitter!! www.Twitter.com/ultimate_bet
Tags: Beer Pong, Bellagio, Dodgers, doyle brunson, Ericka Schoenberg, Scott Ian, Vegas
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Saturday, April 4, 2009 - Phil Hellmuth
Y’all would be surprised—somewhat anyway—at all of the crazy bets that are made amongst the high stakes poker players. I’ve decided to write about just some of these fun bets.
“Chip” Reese betting Yosh Nakano $5,000 on whose bag would come up first at the baggage claim belt in Australia—Chip won. Mike Matusow betting me $10,000 on the position of Robert Varkonyi when he played a huge pot with John Shipley, where Varkonyi’s J-J was up against Shipley’s A-J at the 2002 World Series of Poker’s (WSOP) final table; Matusow bet they were on the button, and in the small blind, and Mike was right for $10,000 of my money!
Huck Seed betting me $10,000 that he could float in any “body of water” for 24 hours; Huck was allowed to wear a wetsuit. Huck lost, but I hear that he may have won the bet had he tried to do it in the Dead Sea. Huck flying to Madison, Wis. to play me nine-ball for $2,000 a game in my basement, on my beautiful Italian cloth pool table; I lost $24,000 in one night. Me betting Yosh Nakano on the Academy Awards in 1992 or so (the year that Marissa Tomei won best supporting actress for “My Cousin Vinny”), and losing $12,000 in the process; although I did win the first $2,000 bet of the night when Tomei won!
A group of player’s, who shall remain nameless, that bet $10,000 a “prop” while they play $80-$160 Hold’em at UltimateBet! Doyle Brunson and Mike Sexton scrambling vs. Huck Seed and Howard Lederer scrambling for $80,000 NASA (five ways) at TPC Summerlin; Brunson and Sexton were playing the red tees and Lederer and Seed the blue tees.
According to Doyle, he and Sexton were huge favorites in the match, hitting irons into every par five, and flip wedges into every par four. Even still, Doyle says Huck and Howard played like “supermen” and were ahead on the number sixteen green, staring at a short birdie putt to lock in to a big win when Doyle knocked in a fifty-footer for a birdie for his team. Now Howard (Bub) and Huck, to their credit, still made their putt. However, the Bub/Huck team then proceeded to implode with bogies on holes 17 and 18 to lose $160,000, when pars on those two last holes would have won them at least $160,000.
In August 1999, I bet Tiger Woods to win at 6 to 1 odds against Bill Gazes, for $1,000 a bet: luckily, I bet it three weeks in a row and won $18,000–go Tiger go! A couple of years back, I bet Curtis Bibb that David Duval would win at 12 to 1 odds after Duval was 10 strokes back going into the weekend. I checked the scores on Saturday night and gave up all hope, only to find out that Duval shot 59 on Sunday to win.
Mike Matusow and I betting $5,000 on the position I was in during a hand at the 2003 WSOP with 27 players left. Only thing was, we bet one week after the fact, and I hadn’t slept all week because the hand haunted me; not to mention that I had just finished writing an article about the hand. Of course Mike lost that one, but he figured it out in time to not lose $10,000—I was in the process of kicking up the bet when it dawned on him that he’d lost!
David Grey betting Doyle $10,000 a tournament on last longer bets at the WSOP a couple years back; Doyle won the first eight bets.
Then there’s Amarillo Slim’s classic bet where he bet several gentleman $38,000 (a ton of money at the time) that he could hit a golf ball at least one mile. By the way, Slim’s book, “Amarillo Slim in a World full of Fat people” is really excellent! The ground rules were set; the ball had to go one mile, but not downhill, he couldn’t hit it off of a mountain, he couldn’t hit it out of an airplane, he couldn’t hit it into a moving boxcar, in fact there were three pages of legal paper filled with conditions. So Slim went out to a frozen lake in the dead of winter, and teed it up downwind! Two of the now chagrined gentleman followed the bright-orange-colored-ball with power cat snowmobiles for about a mile and a half. But this ball, under these conditions, was like the energizer bunny; still going!
Finally, I want to mention Doyle Brunson’s bet (getting laid some odds), where he won one million dollars from Lyle Berman, Chip Reese and Bobby Baldwin for a weight bet that ended at the 2003 WSOP! Congrats Doyle, you look great as always!
Tags: Academy Awards, Amarillo Slim, Chip Reese, doyle brunson, Howard Lederer, Huck Seed, Mike Matusow, mike sexton, Tiger Woods, WSOP
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